Supremely Abominable Crimes, an over-clever title taken from the words of the formal 'Arrest Order' issued by King Philip the Fair in 1307, is one of the books I enjoyed doing the most, a natural outgrowth of The Templars: Knights of God, in which a single chapter deals with the trials and suppression of the Order of the Temple.
It focuses on the three-month trial which took place in Paris in 1310, based on the Latin transcripts which were published by the great French historian Jules Michelet as Le Procès des Templiers in the mid-nineteenth century. From them we learn that the interrogations took place in the private chapel and garden of the Bishop of Paris, beside his now-disappeared palace. The site was on the south side of Notre Dame, where a large tree can be seen to the left of the cathedral in the banner image above. The photo was taken on a gloomy October morning probably much as it was when the interrogations began on Saturday 14 October 1310.
The transcripts were republished in a more accessible paperback version by Les Éditions du C.T.H.S (the 'Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques' of the French Ministry of Education), in two volumes in 1987 - over a thousand pages of Latin text. A reading of these transcripts is both boring and exciting: boring because many of the interrogations are identical with the same questions and the same well-rehearsed answers; exciting because sudden glimpses of personality and details of living conditions appear.
“The author is scrupulous, avoiding the mish-mash of fact and fantasy which has accumulated around the Templars’ reputation. In Burman’s careful hands [the story] is authoritatively told.”
Published records of other trials were used for reference and elaboration, and several excellent chronicles provided contemporary opinion and eye-witness detail: you in particular the Latin chronicle of the monk of St Denis, Guillaume de Nangis, and his unknown continuator; the anonymous semi-official history of the Capetians known as Les grandes chronicles de France; the Italian Croniche of the Florentine historian Giovanni Villani; the Excerpta of the Benedictine monk Jean de Paris from the Benedictine monastery of St Victor; and the rhyming chronicle in old French attributed to a contemporary royal clerk, anonymous but usually referred to as Geoffrey de Paris.
On the basis of the inquisitorial accuracy concerning the temporary addresses of the men on trial, and other sources such as the Book of the Poll-Tax of Paris for the previous decade, it was possible to construct a map of their locations around the city which was included in the book.
The aim was to create a readable narrative from this often dry and laconic evidence.
A new and revised edition will appear here soon, available through Amazon, with the new title:
THE TRIAL OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR IN PARIS, 1310
“The trial of the Knights Templar in the 14th century makes reading that would sober up even the most jaded Fleet Street sleazemonger. They were accused by the Inquisition of a wide range of crimes including sodomy, bottom kissing, devil worship and sacrilegious acts on the cross, and their seven year trial, intricately unravelled by Burman’s scholarship, resulted in the abolition of the greatest of all crusading orders, with its wealth sequestered and its Grand Master burned.
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“Ranks with Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” as a evocation of the dread fourteenth century, although the focus is narrower – centring on the crucial trial of the French Knights Templar in Paris in 1310. Court records by the Inquisition reveal the events that fell upon and crushed this famed warrior-monk order, formed to crusade in the near east. In fact, ineffectual since defeat in 1291, the Templars were destroyed by their own legend – of wealth, malpractice and arrogance. Burman’s history haunts the mind long afterwards.
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The bishop's garden stretched from the walls of the cathedral to the lamp-post visible on the left, and also the area behind the apse. It contained a palace and hall used in the trial, with residential quarters and orchards.